July 24 Sermon Notes Gen. 29:15-28, Rom. 8:26-39. Mt. 13:31-33, 44-52


Again this week we have an abundance of Scriptural riches to consider. In the gospel, we have a small collection of short parables, not Luke's literary masterpieces but emphatic little illustrations of the kingdom of god, the way of God's intentions and dealings with the world. At first, I want to see this is parallel to the old phrase about acorns and mighty oaks. In the first Shrek movie the prince is said to have an edifice complex, and that does seem to be an American obsession too. When I was at Illinois State they spoke of their band as the biggest college band, not the best, but the biggest. No, here a small seed makes not a towering oak but a mighty shrub.Small is beautiful-so a small seed makes a nice shrub-I love the phrase the greatest of shrubs. Yet,the shrub is good as a shrub-look at what it can do; it appropriate to its identity. Bigger is not always better, but it is alive and well, the shrub.  We look to appropriate size. Is the yeast a corrupting example, an unexpected power, if a measure is 17 pounds, that is some serious bread. does it mean that the kingdom works beneath the surface, in a hidden hand , surreptitious way, or doe sit have a sense of corruption? A little thing like yeast can work some powerful magic.

 

In our Genesis story, yeast appears in Uncle Laban. Jacob meets up with his true twin in Uncle Laban. So he struggles with the cheating one being cheated, although later he gets back at Laban. Since  Laban tricks Jacob by switching brides on him,  Jacob works for him for 14 years. Just as Isaac was played for blind, now Jacob is. The old issue of infertility strikes the family of Abraham again. So the two wives bring in reinforcements, their own maids into the marriage, so Jacob has four wives. Now that would challenge even  his abilities at cunning and manipulation. Like the TV show big Love, Jacob must have lived in a version of a soap opera. he extends the family issue of playing favorites by having Rachel be the favored wife. They were trying to earn his love with children, and my guess is that he was playing them off each other, power politics in the tents of Laban. Jacob here portrays the male dream of having women compete for his favors. On the other hand, Jacob's little world is a microcosm of the many complexities of politics in the larger world. President Clinton used to say that the best cannot become the enemy of the good. Again, god can work in the messy world of human affairs, not only the best but a good enough option instead of the abstract culmination of the type (Chasing Amy). Our disquiet about small being good enough, or of wanting more and more stem from an insecurity abut oneself and the future.

 

Paul almost gives us a catalog of the trials that make us fee alone and abandoned in the world, even by God. No, Jesus was assaulted by those same powers. For all our tendency to be judgemental, Paul asks us, who is in a position to condemn? the response is not one of us: only Christ, yet Christ died for us, the seemingly little people in a world marked with the ambition of being number one, and the Jacob and Laban's of the world always fining the one person more manipulative and more clever than they and seeing their best-laid plans lie in ashes at their feet. .When my brother committed suicide almost 22 years ago, this was the passage that I clung to like a piece of wreckage after a shipwreck.  Not cancer, not Alzheimer's, not governmental gridlock , not war. not economic decline, not a broken heart Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ